Rich by Coin

Macquarie says total stablecoin market cap has reached about $312 billion, up roughly 50% year over year. Most activity still comes from crypto trading, but real-world payments and institutional use are rising. Visa, Mastercard and major banks are integrating stablecoins or tokenized deposits into payments and settlement systems, the bank said. Stablecoins are evolving from a niche crypto trading tool into a potential layer of global financial infrastructure, according to Australian investment bank Macquarie.

While most U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin activity, mainly in Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, still comes from crypto trading, accounting for about 90% of volume, the bank said adoption is expanding across payments, remittances, treasury operations and tokenized assets, increasingly linking traditional finance with decentralized finance. Stablecoin adoption is making strides in cross-border remittances, but adoption as form of payment still has room to grow, presenting an attractive total addressable market (TAM) opportunity, analysts led by Paul Golding said in the Monday note. Regulatory progress is helping drive the shift. The analysts pointed to developments such as the U.S. GENIUS Act, Europe’s MiCA framework and emerging Asia-Pacific regulations as factors pushing stablecoins from speculative uses toward institutional settlement tools.

Tether’s USDT is the largest stablecoin by market value and trading volume, serving as a key source of liquidity across crypto exchanges, while Circle’s USDC is the second largest and is widely used in institutional and decentralized finance applications. Together, the tokens underpin much of the crypto market’s activity and are increasingly being explored for payments, remittances and settlement. The report noted that Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA) now support USDC settlement, allowing card obligations to be discharged onchain, and banks are experimenting with similar systems, with JPMorgan’s JPMD tokenized deposit product, Citi’s Token Services and tokenized deposit pilots at HSBC cited as evidence that blockchain-based settlement is gaining traction among large financial institutions. Adjusted stablecoin transfer volume reached roughly $11 trillion in 2025, signaling that on-chain dollars are becoming a meaningful economic tool within crypto markets and in some real-world payment corridors.